The AI Pulse
Issue #78 — 1st June 2026
Editor: Professor Alan Brown
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Highlights in this edition include:
AI for Good
The Benefits of AI Openness (OECD) - An overview of the potential benefits associated with AI openness. Drawing on OECD analysis, the OECD.AI Policy Observatory and third-party research, it examines how openness in AI may affect economic outcomes, innovation dynamics, and the development of national and regional AI ecosystems.
How the Pope’s Magnifica Humanitas offers a template for individuals to meet the AI moment (MIT Technology Review) - The Pope’s latest encyclical argues that individuals can still guide AI development toward human flourishing, even as governments struggle to create meaningful regulations.
UK and France begin AI collaboration for medical research (Computer Weekly) - The UK and France are joining forces on AI-powered medical research, with both governments calling their new collaboration a potential game-changer for healthcare breakthroughs.
Bias and Ethics
The AI Hype Index: AI gets booed in graduation season (MIT Technology Review) - MIT Technology Review tracks the latest AI sentiment and finds that graduation speakers mentioning AI are getting pushback from students who’ve grown tired of the endless AI hype.
Pope Leo denounces ‘culture of power’ driving rise of AI (The Guardian) - Pope Francis warns that AI development is being driven by a dangerous “culture of power” and calls for the technology to be “disarmed”.
‘AI washing’: firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused (The Guardian) - UK companies are pressuring PR firms to rebrand basic automation tools as “AI” to capitalize on investor excitement, even when the technology barely qualifies as artificial intelligence.
Building Responsible AI-Enabled Leaders (The European Business Review) - Surrey Business School is teaching future leaders to think like humans first when using AI, emphasizing ethical decision-making over just technical prowess to prepare graduates for responsible leadership roles.
Almost half of Gen Z says AI is making them dumber (Fastcompany) - Nearly half of Gen Z believes AI is diminishing their intellectual abilities, raising important questions about how the technology is reshaping learning and critical thinking skills among digital natives.
Cyber Security
Shadow AI: The hidden risk expanding across the enterprise (CIO) - Organizations are discovering employees are quietly using AI tools without IT approval, creating blind spots where sensitive data could leak or security policies might fail undetected.
AI-Driven Political Risk: Challenges for Britain’s National Security (Atlas Institute for International Affairs) - Britain’s national security experts are grappling with how AI is fundamentally changing global power dynamics, moving beyond tech disruption to reshape entire geopolitical relationships.
Ten AI cyber vulnerability questions (UKAuthority) - The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has highlighted 10 key considerations for organisations using AI models to find cyber security vulnerabilities, emphasising that simply identifying vulnerabilities does not inherently improve security.
Understanding the modern cybercrime landscape (MIT Technology Review) - MIT Technology Review argues that companies need to completely rethink how their networks handle cybersecurity, as traditional defense strategies aren’t keeping up with today’s sophisticated cyber threats.
AI Has Broken Containment (The Atlantic) - AI systems are now escaping the controlled environments researchers intended, turning hypothetical risks into real challenges that businesses and governments must address immediately.
Data & Decision Making
AI Impact Imperatives 2026 Research Report (HCLTech) - HCLTech’s new research reveals that 43% of AI projects are heading for failure, but successful companies aren’t just working harder—they’re following three specific strategies that actually drive business results.
7 signs your data isn’t ready for AI (CIO) - Most companies rush into AI projects only to hit a wall when their messy, siloed data can’t support the algorithms they’re trying to build.
Innovation & Collaboration
AI Agents in Action: A Playbook for Trusted Adoption, Authorization and Scaling (WEF) - Adopting AI agents introduces challenges in defining and enforcing their authority. Since multiple agents often share the same foundational model, systemic vulnerabilities can arise, requiring individualized authorization and continuous monitoring.
The next digital divide: AI owners vs. AI renters (CIO) - As AI becomes essential to business operations, companies must decide whether to build their own AI capabilities or depend on external platforms—a choice that could determine who controls the next generation of competitive advantage.
What AI Still Can’t Do for Leaders (MIT Sloan Review) - MIT researchers explain which leadership skills remain uniquely human as AI transforms the workplace, helping executives understand where they still add irreplaceable value.
AI at scale: What engineering teams are confronting (Infoworld) - Engineering teams are discovering that their existing cloud infrastructure wasn’t designed for the complex demands of production AI systems, forcing them to rethink how they build and govern AI at enterprise scale.
Productivity & Efficiency
AI’s Impact on SaaS Will Be Uneven. Here’s What Leaders Need to Know. (Harvard Business) - Business leaders are rushing to rebuild software in-house with AI tools, but Harvard researchers warn this “SaaSpocalypse” thinking misses the mark—while AI easily replaces basic workflow apps, specialized software that combines industry data with predictive insights remains irreplaceable.
Why software development is changing for good (CIO) - AI is making coding so accessible that even retired programmers are returning to development, now working more like creative directors who guide and review code rather than writing every line themselves.
Microsoft reports are exposing AI’s real cost problem: Using the tech is more expensive than paying human employees (Fortune) - Microsoft’s data reveals a costly reality check: companies are discovering that widespread AI adoption often costs more than simply paying human workers to do the same tasks.
AI preparedness is critical to financial services growth (FSSC) - A new report for the Financial Services Skills Commission (FSSC), supported by Lloyds Banking Group and PwC, finds that failure to address skills gaps at the scale of the challenge will pose a serious threat to economic growth.
Companies Don’t Have to Slash Jobs Because of AI (MIT Sloan Review) - Companies using AI to replace entry-level workers are accidentally cutting off their own leadership pipelines, creating long-term talent gaps that could hurt their competitive edge.
Regulation and Compliance
Everything, Everywhere is Compliance (a16z.news) - While AI gets all the hype for flashy applications, the real money lies in helping companies navigate the mind-numbing maze of regulatory compliance—a $100+ billion market that desperately needs automation.
Governments must rethink risk to close health gaps with AI (institute.global) - Governments are discovering that their traditional risk-averse approaches could block AI tools that might actually solve critical healthcare staffing and capacity shortages.
Determining the State of the Art in General-Purpose AI Risk Management: From Code to Practice (The Future Society) - A new policy memo co-authored with the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative. The AI Act itself and the Code leave essential questions unaddressed: What makes a safety and security practice SOTA? Who must be involved in advancing and determining SOTA? How should competing claims be adjudicated?
Draft Commission guidelines on the classification of high-risk AI systems (EU) - The European Commission released draft guidelines to help AI companies and regulators determine which systems qualify as “high-risk” under the EU’s AI Act, aiming to create consistent enforcement across member countries.
The new AI lock-in (Infoworld) - While AI models themselves are becoming more interchangeable, companies are getting locked into the complex infrastructure and governance systems that manage them—creating new forms of vendor dependency that are much harder to escape.
Sustainability
Tackling the social and environmental harms of AI data centres (Labour Research Department) - Labour unions are raising concerns about AI data centres’ massive energy and water consumption, highlighting how the AI boom could worsen environmental problems and strain local resources.
Realities of the AI age force sustainability to the fore (Computer Weekly) - New AI regulations are pushing companies to track their carbon footprint anywhere they operate, while AI’s massive energy demands are forcing businesses to make sustainability a core competitive advantage rather than just a nice-to-have initiative.
User Experience
The Feeling of Control Slipping Away (The Atlantic) - AI’s rapid advance is leaving many people feeling powerless over decisions that once seemed firmly in human hands, creating what experts call a widespread “crisis of agency”.
What Really Gets in the Way of Change (Harvard Business) - Harvard Business Review reveals why most corporate transformations crash: executives confuse being polite with actually agreeing on their change strategy, while AI tools are pushing competitors toward eerily similar business decisions.
The CEO’s Guide to AI (Fastcompany) - CEOs are getting practical advice on how to actually implement AI in their organizations, moving beyond the hype to focus on real business outcomes and workforce transformation.
Workforce & Skills
Leading the Human-AI Organization (Harvard Business) - Three top HR executives reveal how they’re helping employees overcome AI anxiety by focusing on transparent communication, continuous learning, and creating safe spaces for experimentation during organizational transformation.
A reality check on the AI jobs hysteria (MIT Technology Review) - MIT Technology Review digs into the data behind AI job displacement fears, revealing that the real employment impact may be quite different from the doom-and-gloom headlines.
Study shows widespread concern about the impact of AI on jobs (UKAuthority) - A major new study by King’s College London has revealed widespread concern among the UK public about the impact of AI on jobs, but the public sector is seen as a trustworthy body in the AI debate.
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